Familiar with the formalities from long use, Aristide quickly ticked off his choices, specifying that he would have a total resurrection if he were subject to even a small amount of brain damage affecting memory or intelligence, and reporting that he wished immediate resurrection even in the event of massive environmental damage, cosmic catastrophe, or war.
He was also asked to decide how soon he should be resurrected in the event he was reported missing. “Immediately,” he answered. An unusual answer, and the AI attendant pointed this out. Aristide repeated his answer.
These various options did not exist in Midgarth. It was felt by the scholars and re-creationists who founded the pocket universe that their partners, the fantasy gamers, might tip the entire population into chaos through their inclination for adventure, war, and violence. Therefore a penalty was exacted for a disappearance or a violent death—the victim would spend five years in limbo. Though the individual could be resurrected outside Midgarth during that time, he could not return to the pocket until his term had expired. In the meantime, his property would be inherited by his nearest relative, an heir specified in a will, or by the state; and all obligations, marriages, and legal contracts were terminated. When he returned to life, it would be with nothing, and he would reappear in a random Pool of Life somewhere in the pocket’s inhabited area.
“Starting over with zero points,” as the gamers had it.
In no other pocket were the rules quite so draconian. Though re-creationists had areas in other universes where they refought the Second World War, the conquests of Alexander, the American and English civil wars, civic life in the Roman Republic, the expansion of the Arab Caliphate, the empire of the Mongolian Khans, or the Warring States of both China and Japan, these areas were more clearly intended as giant theme parks. People did not spend their entire lifetimes in these zones, no citizens were born there, and no one’s death was prolonged by the length of more than a single battle.
No one, it was noted, tried to re-create the Control-Alt-Delete War. It was pure chance who fell victim to the Seraphim, and who survived: a war in which the entire population were innocent civilians under attack was too frightening to be any fun. Rerunning that war was the grim job of the security services, whose task was to prevent such a thing from happening ever again.
At the Pool of Life Aristide took the opportunity to change his appearance, becoming shorter, stockier, and fair-haired. He rose from the coffin-sized pool, let the silver nanomachines flow off his body, and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a few experimental steps, backward and forward. His center of gravity had changed.
He had equipped the new body with a cerebral implant. He turned it on, and was immediately informed of all the messages he’d been ignoring since his return, as well as a weather report coupled with an advertisement for Trapped in Happy Virt, the new Anglo Jones action-comedy.
He turned the implant off.
Aristide accepted his belongings from the attendant, hitched Tecmessa over his shoulder on its strap, and returned to his hotel. There, he took the sword from its case along with a special tool kit. With a few taps of a hammer, he removed the pins that fixed the hilt to the tang of the blade. He put on a glove and pulled the sword blade from the hilt, and returned the blade to the case. From the case he drew out a matte-black wand on which there was a flatscreen display: he slotted this into the hilt and reset the pins that would hold it in place.
Swords were eccentric items for immigrants to carry to a high-tech world. An antique sword hilt carrying an AI assistant, while unusual, was bound to cause a lot less comment.
Aristide told the assistant to waken, then turned on his implant and told the two to talk to each other. Protocols and information were exchanged. Aristide paid no attention to the back-and-forth.
The implant gave a soft chime to attract Aristide’s attention, and informed him that a pair of deliveries had just been made to the hotel. Aristide told the hotel to bring the deliveries to his room.
One delivery was a new identity card listing him as one Franz Sandow, the seventy-nine-year-old owner of a bakery supply company who had just sold his business and embarked in a new, young body on what was probably a first retirement. Franz was unmarried, rootless, and financially independent—just the sort of person that an evil god might consider a useful recruit.
Aristide contemplated the pocket-sized card. Information being so readily available, the demise of the physical identity card had been predicted for centuries, but somehow the object had proved durable. It was simply convenient to have everything handy in one place—the new card contained Franz Sandow’s whole legal and medical history, birth and education, fingerprints and retina prints, and—just for color’s sake—the record of a couple of juvenile arrests for flying his glider low over traffic.
The second package contained Franz’s new wardrobe, tailored to the new body and more in the current mode than Aristide’s clothes had been. Also more colorful—Franz was clearly the sort of person who enjoyed wearing autumn golds and reds. Aristide put on the new clothing and through his implant gave the clothes a few last instructions, to assure fit and comfort.
Bitsy had arranged Aristide’s new identity while Aristide slept and paid his visit to the Pool of Life. She had not simply created the identity, but was now busy retroactively inserting the relevant facts into appropriate public databases on the Eleven, Luna, and Earth, all the locations through the reconstructed solar system where data was secured against some catastrophe, so that no vital information would be lost and every individual could be guaranteed an eventual resurrection.
The false identity wouldn’t stand up to a thorough background search, but then no false identity would. It was hoped that the Priests of the Venger—or whoever was doing the kidnapping on Hawaiki—would do no more than a quick check on a potential victim before trying to drag him through a wormhole to his fate.
While Aristide donned his new wardrobe and twitched it into place, Bitsy crouched motionless on a chair while, in many other locations in the humming electronic world, carefully entering pieces of Franz Sandow’s history into the record.
It wasn’t a job that a human could do. Because one of the Eleven was required to authenticate all such information, only one of the Eleven could give a human a false identity. Which, under the Asimovian Protocols, was only permitted under very limited circumstances.
“Message from Miss Daljit,” the cat reported without moving. Bitsy—or rather Endora—was handling the massively ciphered communications among the various counterconspirators.
“Send it to the new assistant.”
Aristide held Tecmessa’s hilt before him, the assistant uppermost. Daljit’s face appeared blinking on the screen.
“Did the gin work?” Aristide asked.
Daljit frowned as she tried to focus on the image that had appeared before her.
“You’re the new Pablo?” she asked.
“I’m the new Franz.”
Daljit looked at him. “The gin made me morose. I kept wandering around the apartment thinking I should be saying goodbye to things. I think I prefer Aristide.”
“Frankly, so do I.”
She passed a hand across her forehead. “I didn’t sleep. I haven’t been concentrating on my work. I keep wanting to look up things relevant to what’s happening, but I don’t want to do anything suspicious so I’ve been restraining myself. I’m trying to act normally, but I can’t believe in normality anymore.”
He smiled. “I think you’re doing fine.”
“I envy you.” Her expression was serious. “You can do something. You can swash buckles and bash bad guys and root out evil gods.”
“Let’s hope so,” he murmured.
“I have to sit here and try to remember what normal is so that I can behave that way.”
“If you want to get away,” Aristide said, “you’re welcome to use my cabin on Tremaine Island.”
“Really?” Daljit’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”
“Contact Bitsy when you want to go there. She’ll tell you how to find it, and open the house for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Try not to overdose on gin once you get there.”
She made an effort to laugh. “I won’t try the gin again. Not when it just makes me sad.” Her look turned accusatory. “You’re not sad, are you?”
“Sad? No. I’m all sorts of things, but sad hasn’t hit me yet.” “You’re probably happy that you’ve got something important to do. You’ve probably even made a poem about it.”
“A poem?” His brows arched. “No, I haven’t had time. Or the inclination, for that matter.”
“Oh.” She seemed disappointed. “I was hoping you could recite it for me.”
He thought for a moment. “If you don’t mind my being unoriginal,” he said, and began the old poem of Li Shangyin.
You ask when I will return.
The time is not yet known.
Night rain overspills the autumn pools
on Ba Shan Mountain.
When shall we trim a candle at the western window
And speak of this night’s mountain rain?
There was a moment’s silence.
“You’re sad, too,” Daljit said.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I am.”
Aristide flew over the reef on pulsing wings. Everything about him was alive: the fish, the sponges, the plants, the coral, the anemone. The sea horses hidden in the weeds, the morays in the broken coral, the octopus curled into a ball and waiting for night, the cowries and conchs and sea slugs, the diatoms floating in the water. All part of one gigantic, intricate system, a network of life grown to fill the void of the ocean.
Aristide banked and sideslipped into deeper water. Blues soaked up the bright reds and yellows of the coral. Large predator fish floated in silver shoals: tuna, yellowtail, barracuda with their huge platter eyes. Fan coral reached stone hands to sieve the current. Spiny lobster sheltered in alcoves. Overhead, a long endless dazzling stripe marked the source of light.
Hawaiki was a pocket universe of islands, reefs, atolls, shallow seas, and the occasional deep trench, all intended for humans adopted to aquatic living. The few continents—all implied spaces—were small, dispersed, and for the most part uninhabited.
Three different versions of humanity shared the vast sea. The first group—and the smallest in number—were largely unmodified humans, “walkers” in the local slang, those who couldn’t survive underwater without special equipment. For the most part these were visitors who came for the beach life, and others who catered to them. The second group were amphibians, capable of living either on water or land, though not without certain inconveniences. The third, “pelagians,” had become completely aquatic.
Franz Sandow had chosen to join the second group. Though attracted by underwater existence, as a first-time visitor he had not wanted entirely to foresake the idle comforts of beach life.
Far more important, all three of the tourists reported missing in the Thousand Islands had chosen the amphibian lifestyle. Since Aristide intended to imitate the perfect victim, the semi-aquatic choice seemed best.
Aristide looked up at a chittering, excited sound from other wanderers over the reef. Apparently they’d discovered something interesting. Aristide curved toward the light, his wings rippling.
His basic physical form was humanoid, if hairless and with extra insulating layers of subcutaneous fat that gave him a burly appearance. His skin was a glossy black, with rows of red spots outlining his limbs, giving him a superficial resemblance to a doll used to teach acupuncture. Growing from his dorsal side were a pair of triangular wings similar to those of a stingray, and beneath these were feathery gills, their branches bright pink with blood and oxygen. When he left the water for land, the gills were safely tucked away beneath the wings that draped from his shoulders like a cloak.
His forehead bulged out over his face, like that of a dolphin. He had a special hollow in his skull, filled with an analog of spermaceti oil, that could be used both to project and to receive sound.
Like a dolphin, he could paralyze a fish with a blast of directed sound from his forehead. Unlike a dolphin, he had thus far shown no appetite for tearing the fish apart with his teeth or swallowing it whole.
Rising up the flank of a great bulwark of coral, Aristide looked up to see a turtle, its shell two meters long, shoot right over his head. His fellow visitors had found the turtle, a leatherback, and had clustered around it. Pursued, the turtle had turned for deeper water and met Aristide coming up.
Aristide performed a lazy half-turn, his wings making an S-shape as seen from above, and with a sense of wonder and delight he watched the turtle recede, harassed by neeping sightseers.
A smaller form danced into his view.
—Enjoying yourself, boss? The words came as a low-frequency gurgle produced by Bitsy’s diaphragm. Her new form resembled that of an otter, though in this case an otter with gills and a long, bladelike tail that propelled her through the water.
—I don’t know why I haven’t tried this before. Aristide’s reply was squirted from his forehead bulge as a kind of fizzing sound.
—Because you’re too conservative, that’s why. Bitsy swooped in a series of S-curves along the reef.
Aristide’s new brain had come with the ability to code and decode basic aquatic speech. At first it was unsettling, like having a tooth filling that received radio broadcasts, with the experience made all the more confusing by the fact that all of Aristide’s new body was configured to receive sound. His ears could hear in what was sub-and supersonic in normal humans. His skeleton hummed to different frequencies of low-frequency sound. Frequencies even lower on the spectrum were felt by his viscera. The bulge on his forehead could amplify distant sound.
So it wasn’t like having one tooth receiving radio, it was like having half a dozen. The aquatic environment was noise-rich, with water carrying sound greater distances than did air. It took practice for Aristide to learn how, and when, to mentally turn down the volume on certain frequencies, or ignore them altogether.
Also, though he had an innate basic competence in aquatic speech, he was having a hard time understanding much of it. Idiomatic aquatic speech changed rapidly. It was as if he’d learned proper Arabic from a book, or from a recording, and had then been dropped into the Cairo bazaar among native speakers who had grown up in the street and knew the cultural references and the latest slang.
He also found himself extremely sensitive to taste. Seawater tasted in varying degrees of salt, copper, and iodine, and less readily identifiable minerals—but for the most part it tasted of life, of algae and microscopic life, of chemical signals used in meeting and mating, of fish and seaweed and blood. Decoding it all could take the experience of twenty years.
A shadow passed over Aristide, and he looked up. Overhead was the guide, Herenui, who was keeping a watchful eye on her charges. She gave him a brilliant white smile and a wave as she floated above, then banked and flew away with slow grace.
—Don’t play piggyback with the turtle, she sang to the sightseers. Remember, you could drown it.
Afterward, as the catamaran Mareva raced to another dive site, the captain, Ari’i, an unmodified human, served the sightseers buckets of steamed clams. Aristide, sunning himself on the afterdeck, ate with pleasure and shared the clam meat with Bitsy.
Herenui, walking forward, paused by Aristide, and then knelt to stroke Bitsy’s sleek head. Her folded wings draped on the teak deck.
“You seemed to be adjusting well,” she said.
“I’m still having a hard time sorting signal from noise,” Aristide said.
Herenui had chosen bold colors: her skin was a bright yellow mottled with asymmetric blue patches. Her features were regular. Her breasts were unconfined by the harness that carried the tools of her trade: the flashlight, knife, emergency beacon, the passive video recorder, the inflatable, attachable life balloons that could
carry injured or unconscious people to the surface, the smart slate that gave her data access and allowed her to write messages to those without the ability to decode aquatic speech.
“I’m thinking of immigrating,” Aristide said, “so I hope I get better at understanding what people are saying to me.”
“You’ll pick it up in time,” Herenui said. She looked down at Bitsy and stroked under her chin. “What I’m surprised at is how well your meherio is adjusting. Usually animals have difficulties tuning themselves to a new body.”
“Bitsy was always bright,” Aristide said. “But then she’s my only family, so I have to make sure she’ll be happy here.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were the blue of a cloudless sky. “Have you been to Hawaiki before?”
“No. I was too busy running my business to take vacations. But the harder I worked, the more I thought about this place. So when I sold out and had no more responsibilities, I came straight here.”
I have money and travel alone and have no obligations he was saying to anyone who would listen. Please take me to see your evil god.
So far, no one had responded. But then, he’d only been in Hawaiki for two days.
The helmsman, up on the flybridge where he had a better view of the shifting reefs, turned the wheel. The boat turned and began to shoulder into big ocean rollers. Laughter sounded from the bow as spray drenched the sightseers lying there. An empty soft drink bottle rolled across the deck.
The impellers shifted to a higher pitch. Aristide tried to ignore the noise, but failed.
Herenui stood and widened her stance as she reacted to the increased motion of the boat. She smiled down at him.
“Well,” she said. “If it’s your first vacation in all that time, make sure you enjoy every moment.”
“I’ll try,” said Aristide.
“Not!” said Bitsy. She stropped herself against Herenui’s ankles. “Not go!”
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